Wafers/waffles

July 29, 2011

Though we know of quite a few full meals of the medieval and renaissance era, our understanding on how to compose an entire meal properly are limited at best. While the dishes can be reproduced fairly well, we only have tidsbits of information suggesting when in a meal they should be served.

However, in quite a few places we do find suggestions on what to end a meal with, both with the purpose to aid digestion and general wellbeing. A common suggestion would be to eat pears and cheese, which in other words is a tradition with a rather old origin. Another tradtion that we have more or less lost by now was to end a meal with wafers and spiced wine.

As the manor did have an ancient (or probably 18th century) wafer iron, I decided that I should have a go at making wafers. Making wafers at least dates back to the 14th century, as is evident in this image from 1340. (Note the bowl of batter next to the wafermaking king)

The recipes I used for this trial was a French recipe from the late 14th century and a dutch recipe from the mid 16th century. It seems that the proper definition of wafers and waffles is a bit vague why the recipes chosen use the term waffles instead of wafers.

Le ménagier de Paris (1393)

Waffles are made in four ways. In the first, beat eggs in a bowl, then salt and wine, and add flour, and moisten the one with the other, and then put in two irons little by little, each time using as much batter as a slice of cheese is wide, and clap between two irons, and cook one side and then the other; and if the iron does not easily release the batter, anoint with a little cloth soaked in oil or fat. – The second way is like the first, but add cheese, that is, spread the batter as though making a tart or pie, then put slices of cheese in the middle, and cover the edges (with batter: JH); thus the cheese stays within the batter and thus you put it between two irons. – The third method, is for dropped waffles, called dropped only because the batter is thinner like clear soup, made as above; and throw in with it fine cheese grated; and mix it all together. – The fourth method is with flour mixed with water, salt and wine, without eggs or cheese.

Nyuewen Coock Boek (1560)

To bake good wafers.
Take grated white bread. Take with that the yolk of an egg and a spoonful of pot sugar or powdered sugar. Take with that half water and half wine, and ginger and cinnamon.

For the first recipe I chose to use the simpler of the two recipes, that of a 16th century dutch origin. The first part of making the dish was fairly straight forward, mixed the ingredients until I got a a nice thick batter. However using a “cooking wine” instead of a proper wine was not really a wise choice as it did not add anything to the flavour – but there was no chance to get myself some wine from the winestore.

The waferiron was then heated over embers and greased with butter. At first parts of the the wafers got stuck onto the iron. But with a somewhat higher temperature the wafers both got a nicer colour and loosened easier from the iron. I felt that the addition of spices were a bit to sparingly for my taste – but that could be changed once I redo the dish. Actually the fact that it was usually served at the end of a meal in order to help digestion would make it likely that it was both more spicy and sweet.

The next dish was based on the third variety of wafers/waffles found in the French cookbook, a dish called dropped wafers bases on the texture of the dough. As this dish included grated cheese I predicted that it would stick to the iron even worse than the first recipe. I made a mixture that was not so sticky and thick as the first recipe. Apart from the cheese and the texture of the batter it was made more or less like the above version, with the same problem of a wine that was almost tasteless. Much as I predicted the batter would stick even at a higher temperature. To solve this I added a bit flour with a much better result, even though I am not sure if the batter coud be said to be dropping (still it was more liquid than the batter for the first dish)

This time the wafers turned out fine with a quite nice taste of the cheese. Though the taste was nice in both cases (though a bit underspiced), the main result was to see how well they both turned out visually.

The main practical problem in making the wafers alone, apart from risking that the wafers got stuck, was the problem in handling the hot wafer iron when removing the wafers, which required something of an advanced balancing act.